Can Magnets Help You Sleep?

I get a lot of questions about using magnets to help your body. In this post I want to answer some of the questions that I receive about using magnets to help you sleep. There are several companies that sell magnetic mattress pads, blankets and pillows. People want to know how to use them, what benefits you can expect, are they safe?

I have been sleeping with a magnetic mattress pad, blanket and pillow for ten years, so I will share from my own experience.

Can Magnets Help You Sleep?

That’s the most common, most obvious question. Regardless of what else it might do, anything that you get for you bed should help you get to sleep faster, deeper, or longer. Ideally it would help with all three so that you wake up in the morning refreshed and ready to face a new day.

I remember the first night that I slept on my Nikken sleep system. They call it a “system” because it is three pieces – the magnetic mattress pad, magnetic pillow and magnetic comforter – that work together to create an overall effect. My first thought when I went to bed was that it felt like I was laying on a rock. The next thing I knew it was morning. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept through the night.

Ten years later I’m still sleeping on the same pad and pillow. We just replaced the magnetic comforter last month because it had started to fall apart. I very rarely have any difficulty falling asleep. If I had kept track over the years, I could probably count the number of times that it took more than ten minutes to fall asleep on the fingers of my two hands. So the short answer to the question is yes, I do believe that magnets can help you sleep.

How Deep Will I Sleep?

Someone asked me a related question a while back. They had a fire break out in their home while they were sleeping sometime in the recent past, so they were concerned about how deeply they would sleep. Would they wake up if there was an emergency, like a fire?

That’s a very valid concern, especially given their recent history. That’s not a problem with magnets though. When you sleep on magnets you are sleeping naturally. It isn’t like a drug-induced sleep where your normal activity is suppressed. I’ve never heard of anyone wetting the bed because they were sleeping on a magnetic pad.

Actually, because of the relaxing influence of magnets, I think you are more likely to wake up in an emergency. When you are relaxed your body is free to respond to your environment.

What are the Effects of Long-term Use of a Magnetic Pad?

The next question I have is: what are the effects of long-term use sleeping on a Nikken magnetic mattress pad? If you have searched online for information about magnets, especially magnetic mattress pads, you have seen outrageously high magnetic strengths debates between north and south poles, and all sorts of wild claims about what they can do for you.

None of that applies to the Nikken magnetic mattress pad. The magnets in the Nikken pads are designed to deliver 800 to 900 gauss at the skin surface as opposed to the 3,000 gauss and up that those other pads offer. Those other pads claim to cure cancer while Nikken’s pads only offer the benefits of a great night’s sleep. As such, the effects of long-term use of a Nikken pad are all the same benefits of getting quality sleep every night.

As with all of Nikken’s magnets, the intent with the Nikken sleep system is to immerse your body in a natural magnetic field just as you would experience if you slept outside. Your house insulates you from Earth’s magnetic field, and a lot of the issues that we face may be caused by lack of exposure to it. That’s the only thing that Nikken tries to remedy with their magnetic products.

That brings up the next question…

Can You Use a Nikken Mattress and Electric Blanket?

I have never seen anything stating specifically that you cannot use an electric blanket and a magnetic mattress pad or magnetic blanket, so I cannot give you any documented reason why you cannot use them together.

All the same, I wouldn’t use them together, and here’s why. We use magnets to create electricity, then use electricity to move magnets in an electric motor. As such, the field from one device may have an undesired impact upon the field of the other when you use both an electric blanket and a magnetic pad together.

To be completely honest, I wouldn’t use an electric blanket even without a magnetic mattress pad. As I said above, the electric current in your walls insulates you from the Earth’s magnetic field that supports you. Further, the electricity in your walls cycles at an unnatural frequency that causes potentially harmful electromagnetic fields. When you use an electric blanket, you lay those potentially harmful fields right on top of your body.

The magnetic field from a magnetic mattress pad or magnetic blanket doesn’t have a frequency component that can be harmful.

How to Use a Nikken Mattress Pad

The final question that I want to look at today is how to use a Nikken mattress pad. I actually get this question every few months.

If you have a brand new pad then there should be a label attached to the top surface of the pad. You should be able to read the label right side up when standing at the foot of the bed or laying on the pad with your feet toward the foot of your bed.

If your pad is old or for some reason doesn’t have a label on the surface, look inside for the magnets. The magnets are embedded into the top surface of the pad so that they are closest to your body.

How long do the magnets last?

A related question that I get a lot is how long the magnets will last. In theory they should last forever. In practical terms, they will outlast the materials that the pad itself is made from. Earlier in this post I said that I recently bought a new magnetic blanket because it was starting the fall apart. I decided to cut the magnets out before I threw the old one away.

The magnets are all still very much magnetic. I don’t really have anything else to do with them right now, so I put them on the side of the refrigerator and we write messages and draw pictures with them. There were a lot of magnets in the blanket.

Your Turn

That’s all of the questions that I have received recently about magnetic mattress pads. If you have any questions then please ask them in a comment below.

8 Responses to Can Magnets Help You Sleep?

Hi Ben,
This is so interesting – I’ve never heard of magnetic sleep systems and now I’m truly fascinated!
How does one wash these things? Do they separate from the magnets?
Also I am so interested in what this site is about and look forward to learning more about things I’m not aware of.
Best,
Maria

Hi Maria. I hadn’t heard of them either 10 years ago when I was reading a book in which the author said that everyone should be sleeping on one. I asked a massage therapist that my wife worked with if he knew anything about them and he introduced us to Nikken. I’ve been sleeping on one ever since.

It is possible to remove the cover of the pad to wash it, but it’s a real pain to put back on. Generally you can spot clean if you need to just like a regular mattress. The comforters are dry clean only. Magnets, being made of iron or iron alloys, are best to keep dry.

Thank you for taking the time to visit and write a comment. I appreciate it.

Hi Peter. Our magnetic mattress pads were made in Thailand until recently. Poor sleep does lead to poor productivity, and it also can lead to poor health. Just like the quote from Thomas Dekker said – “Sleep is the golden chain that binds health and our bodies together.”

I used Nikken magnets many years ago. I had the ‘blanket’ product and put it on our bed. I did find it useful in terms of getting a better sleep. The only thing I would say is that the healing effect seemed to wear off after a number of weeks had elapsed. Have you had anyone saying the same thing?

Hi Kim. I have heard many people talk about that. They call it “plateauing” where you reach a point, or plateau, where nothing seems to be improving. The recommendation I usually hear is to put aside all magnets – mattress pads, blankets, jewelry, etc – for a few days to a week. When you start using them again after that period of time you should feel the effects again.

For me, all I have to do is try to sleep somewhere else. I sleep so good on my pad that I don’t like to travel (a king-sized pad doesn’t travel well).

Thanks for the your question. I appreciate you taking the time to visit.

Thanks for visiting again Donna. Being a distributor I get to hear some great stories about the benefits that some people attribute to sleeping on a magnetic mattress pad, comforter and pillow. Probably the best, without making any medical claims because there are plenty of those, is from people who were only able to sleep a couple hours at a time. Once they get on a magnetic pad they are able to sleep two or three times as long, sometimes even getting a full 8 hours of sleep. It means everything for them to get some quality sleep.